her endurance is unknown. The corvette was ship rigged with three masts. Ryūjō was initially armed with a pair of 100-pounder () guns on pivot mounts as chase guns and her broadside armament consisted of eight 64-pounder guns, all of which were smoothbore muzzle-loading guns made by Josiah Vavasseur's London Ordnance Works. After her delivery to the Japanese in 1870, her armament was augmented with a pair of 6-pounder () Armstrong guns and two Parrott rifled muzzle-loading guns of unknown size. By 1872 the Parrott rifles had been replaced by another pair of 64 pounders By 1887 her armament reportedly consisted of two Krupp rifled breech-loading guns and six 70-pounder Vavasseur guns. When the ship was converted into a gunnery training ship in 1894, she was armed with one Krupp 17 cm gun and five rifled muzzle-loaders. The ship's waterline was protected by an armoured belt that weighed . It consisted of two rows of wrought-iron plates with a total height of and was thick. The guns may have been covered by of armour. Construction and career Thomas Blake Glover, a British merchant with extensive commercial interests in Japan, ordered an armoured corvette from the Aberdeen, Scotland, shipyard of Alexander Hall for the price of £42,032. The ship was launched on 27 March 1869 and was completed on 24 July. She departed for Japan on 11 August and arrived at Nagasaki in January 1870 where Glover sold it to the Kumamoto Domain for the price of 270,000 gold Ryō on 12 April. They renamed it (she was later renamed at an unknown date). The corvette was transferred to the new Imperial Japanese Navy on 6 June and was the flagship (and the most powerful ship) of the navy until the completion of the ironclad in 1878. Ryūjō sailed to Yokohama with a British captain shortly afterwards. Ryūjō was inspected by Emperor Meiji during a visit to Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 21 November 1871 and he was hosted aboard the ship during a tour on 23 May 1872. The Emperor reviewed the fleet during its manoeuvres on 26 October. The ship participated in exercises off the island of Sarushima in Tokyo Bay on 19 January 1873 and escorted Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi on his mission to Imperial China later in the year to demand recompense for the murders of Japanese sailors by Taiwanese aborigines in 1871. During the Saga Rebellion, the